Scandinavia
Scandinavia is a subregion in Northern Europe, with strong historical, cultural, and linguistic ties. The term Scandinavia in local usage covers the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. The majority national languages of these three belong to the Scandinavian dialect continuum, and are mutually intelligible North Germanic languages.
In English usage, Scandinavia also sometimes refers more narrowly to the Scandinavian Peninsula, or more broadly so as to include the Åland Islands, the Faroe Islands, Finland and Iceland.
The broader definition is similar to what are locally called the Nordic countries, which also include the remote Norwegian islands of Svalbard and Jan Mayen and Greenland, a constituent country within the Kingdom of Denmark.
Geography
The geography of Scandinavia is extremely varied. Notable are the Norwegian fjords, the Scandinavian Mountains, the flat, low areas in Denmark and the archipelagos of Sweden and Norway. Sweden has many lakes and moraines, legacies of the ice age, which ended about ten millennia ago.The southern and by far most populous regions of Scandinavia have a temperate climate. Scandinavia extends north of the Arctic Circle, but has relatively mild weather for its latitude due to the Gulf Stream. Many of the Scandinavian mountains have an alpine tundra climate.
The climate varies from north to south and from west to east: a marine west coast climate typical of western Europe dominates in Denmark, southernmost part of Sweden and along the west coast of Norway reaching north to 65°N, with orographic lift giving more mm/year precipitation in some areas in western Norway. The central part – from Oslo to Stockholm – has a humid continental climate, which gradually gives way to subarctic climate further north and cool marine west coast climate along the northwestern coast. A small area along the northern coast east of the North Cape has tundra climate as a result of a lack of summer warmth. The Scandinavian Mountains block the mild and moist air coming from the southwest, thus northern Sweden and the Finnmarksvidda plateau in Norway receive little precipitation and have cold winters. Large areas in the Scandinavian mountains have alpine tundra climate.
The warmest temperature ever recorded in Scandinavia is 38.0 °C in Målilla. The coldest temperature ever recorded is −52.6 °C in Vuoggatjålme, Arjeplog. The coldest month was February 1985 in Vittangi with a mean of −27.2 °C.
Southwesterly winds further warmed by foehn wind can give warm temperatures in narrow Norwegian fjords in winter. Tafjord has recorded 17.9 °C in January and Sunndal 18.9 °C in February.
Etymology
The words Scandinavia and Scania are both thought to go back to the Proto-Germanic compound *Skaðin-awjō, which appears later in Old English as Scedenig and in Old Norse as Skáney. The earliest identified source for the name Scandinavia is Pliny the Elder's Natural History, dated to the first century AD.Various references to the region can also be found in Pytheas, Pomponius Mela, Tacitus, Ptolemy, Procopius and Jordanes, usually in the form of Scandza. It is believed that the name used by Pliny may be of West Germanic origin, originally denoting Scania. According to some scholars, the Germanic stem can be reconstructed as and meaning "danger" or "damage". The second segment of the name has been reconstructed as, meaning "land on the water" or "island". The name Scandinavia would then mean "dangerous island", which is considered to refer to the treacherous sandbanks surrounding Scania. Skanör in Scania, with its long Falsterbo reef, has the same stem combined with -ör, which means "sandbanks".
Alternatively, Scadinavia and Skáney, along with the Old Norse goddess name Skaði, may be related to Proto-Germanic . John McKinnell comments that this etymology suggests that the goddess Skaði may have once been a personification of the geographical region of Scandinavia or associated with the underworld.
Another possibility is that all or part of the segments of the name came from the pre-Germanic Mesolithic people inhabiting the region. In modernity, Scandinavia is a peninsula, but between approximately 10,300 and 9,500 years ago the southern part of Scandinavia was an island separated from the northern peninsula, with water exiting the Baltic Sea through the area where Stockholm is now located. Correspondingly, some Basque scholars have presented the idea that the segment sk that appears in *Skaðinawjō is connected to the name for the Euzko peoples, akin to Basques, that populated Paleolithic Europe. According to one scholar, Scandinavian people share particular genetic markers with the Basque people.
Appearance in medieval Germanic languages
The Latin names in Pliny's text gave rise to different forms in medieval Germanic texts. In Jordanes' history of the Goths, the form Scandza is the name used for their original home, separated by sea from the land of Europe. Where Jordanes meant to locate this quasi-legendary island is still a hotly debated issue, both in scholarly discussions and in the nationalistic discourse of various European countries. The form Scadinavia as the original home of the Langobards appears in Paulus Diaconus' Historia Langobardorum, but in other versions of Historia Langobardorum appear the forms Scadan, Scandanan, Scadanan and Scatenauge. Frankish sources used Sconaowe and Aethelweard, an Anglo-Saxon historian, used Scani. In Beowulf, the forms Scedenige and Scedeland are used while the Alfredian translation of Orosius and Wulfstan's travel accounts used the Old English Sconeg.Possible influence on Sami
The earliest Sami yoik texts written down refer to the world as Skadesi-suolo and Skađsuâl, meaning "Skaði's island". Svennung considers the Sami name to have been introduced as a loan word from the North Germanic languages; "Skaði" is the giant stepmother of Freyr and Freyja in Norse mythology. It has been suggested that Skaði to some extent is modeled on a Sami woman. The name for Skade's father Thjazi is known in Sami as Čáhci, "the waterman"; and her son with Odin, Saeming, can be interpreted as a descendant of Saam the Sami population. Older joik texts give evidence of the old Sami belief about living on an island and state that the wolf is known as suolu gievra, meaning "the strong one on the island". The Sami place name Sulliidčielbma means "the island's threshold" and Suoločielgi means "the island's back".In recent substrate studies, Sami linguists have examined the initial cluster sk- in words used in Sami and concluded that sk- is a phonotactic structure of alien origin.
Reintroduction of the term ''Scandinavia'' in the eighteenth century
Although the term Scandinavia used by Pliny the Elder probably originated in the ancient Germanic languages, the modern form Scandinavia does not descend directly from the ancient Germanic term. Rather the word was brought into use in Europe by scholars borrowing the term from ancient sources like Pliny, and was used vaguely for Scania and the southern region of the peninsula.The term was popularised by the linguistic and cultural Scandinavist movement, which asserted the common heritage and cultural unity of the Scandinavian countries and rose to prominence in the 1830s. The popular usage of the term in Sweden, Denmark and Norway as a unifying concept became established in the nineteenth century through poems such as Hans Christian Andersen's "I am a Scandinavian" of 1839. After a visit to Sweden, Andersen became a supporter of early political Scandinavism. In a letter describing the poem to a friend, he wrote: "All at once I understood how related the Swedes, the Danes and the Norwegians are, and with this feeling I wrote the poem immediately after my return: 'We are one people, we are called Scandinavians!'".
The influence of Scandinavism as a Scandinavist political movement peaked in the middle of the nineteenth century, between the First Schleswig War and the Second Schleswig War.
The Swedish king also proposed a unification of Denmark, Norway and Sweden into a single united kingdom. The background for the proposal was the tumultuous events during the Napoleonic Wars in the beginning of the century. This war resulted in Finland becoming the Russian Grand Duchy of Finland in 1809 and Norway becoming independent in 1814, but thereafter swiftly forced to accept a personal union with Sweden. The dependent territories Iceland, the Faroe Islands and Greenland, historically part of Norway, remained with Denmark in accordance with the Treaty of Kiel. Sweden and Norway were thus united under the Swedish monarch, but Finland's inclusion in the Russian Empire excluded any possibility for a political union between Finland and any of the other Nordic countries.
The end of the Scandinavian political movement came when Denmark was denied the military support promised from Sweden and Norway to annex the Duchy of Schleswig, which together with the Duchy of Holstein had been in personal union with Denmark. The Second war of Schleswig followed in 1864, a brief but disastrous war between Denmark and Prussia. Schleswig-Holstein was conquered by Prussia and after Prussia's success in the Franco-Prussian War a Prussian-led German Empire was created and a new power-balance of the Baltic sea countries was established. The Scandinavian Monetary Union, established in 1873, lasted until World War I.
Use of ''Nordic countries'' vs. ''Scandinavia''
The term Scandinavia is commonly used strictly for Denmark, Norway and Sweden as a subset of the Nordic countries.However, in English usage, the term Scandinavia is sometimes used as a synonym or near-synonym for Nordic countries.
Debate about which meaning is more appropriate is complicated by the fact that usage in English is different from usage in the Scandinavian languages themselves, and by the fact that the question of whether a country belongs to Scandinavia is politicised: people from the Nordic world beyond Norway, Denmark and Sweden may be offended at being either included in or excluded from the category of "Scandinavia".
Nordic countries is used unambiguously for Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland, including their associated territories.
In addition to the mainland Scandinavian countries of:
- , which is under Norwegian sovereignty, is not considered part of Scandinavia as a cultural-historical region, but as a part of the Kingdom of Norway.
- , which is under Norwegian sovereignty, is not considered part of Scandinavia as a cultural-historical region, but as a part of the Kingdom of Norway. It is part of the Nordic countries.
There is also the geological term Fennoscandia, which in technical use refers to the Fennoscandian Shield, that is the Scandinavian peninsula, Finland and Karelia. The terms Fennoscandia and Fennoscandinavia are sometimes used in a broader, political sense to refer to Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland.
''Scandinavian'' as an ethnic term
Whereas both narrow and broad conceptions of Scandinavian countries are straightforwardly defined, there is much ambiguity and political contestation as to which people are Scandinavian people. English dictionaries usually define the noun Scandinavian as meaning any inhabitant of Scandinavia. However, the noun Scandinavian is frequently used as a synonym for speakers of Scandinavian languages. This usage can exclude the indigenous Sámi people of Scandinavia, as well as other non-Scandinavian-speaking inhabitants of the region.Thus, based on intersecting cultural and geographic definitions, Scandinavians always include Scandinavian-speaking Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes.
In usages based on cultural/linguistic definitions, Scandinavians also include Faroe Islanders, Icelanders, the Swedish-speaking population of Finland, the Swedish-speaking population of Estonia, and the Scandinavian diaspora.
In usages based on geographical definitions, Scandinavians include Sami people and, depending on how broad an understanding of Scandinavia is being used, Finns and Inuit.
Languages in Scandinavia
Two language groups have coexisted on the Scandinavian peninsula since prehistory—the North Germanic languages and the Sami languages.The majority of the population of Scandinavia today derive their language from several North Germanic tribes who once inhabited the southern part of Scandinavia and spoke a Germanic language that evolved into Old Norse and from Old Norse into Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Faroese, and Icelandic. The Danish, Norwegian and Swedish languages form a dialect continuum and are known as the Scandinavian languages—all of which are considered mutually intelligible with one another. Faroese and Icelandic, sometimes referred to as insular Scandinavian languages, are intelligible in continental Scandinavian languages only to a limited extent.
A small minority of Scandinavians are Sami people, concentrated in the extreme north of Scandinavia.
Finland is mainly populated by speakers of Finnish, with a minority of approximately 5% of Swedish speakers. However, Finnish is also spoken as a recognized minority language in Sweden, including in distinctive varieties sometimes known as Meänkieli. Finnish is distantly related to the Sami languages, but these are entirely different in origin to the Scandinavian languages.
German, Yiddish and Romani are recognized minority languages in parts of Scandinavia. More recent migrations has added even more languages. Apart from Sami and the languages of minority groups speaking a variant of the majority language of a neighboring state, the following minority languages in Scandinavia are protected under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages: Yiddish, Romani Chib/Romanes and Romani.
North Germanic languages
The North Germanic languages of Scandinavia are traditionally divided into an East Scandinavian branch and a West Scandinavian branch, but because of changes appearing in the languages since 1600 the East Scandinavian and West Scandinavian branches are now usually reconfigured into Insular Scandinavian featuring Icelandic and Faroese and Continental Scandinavian, comprising Danish, Norwegian and Swedish.The modern division is based on the degree of mutual comprehensibility between the languages in the two branches. The populations of the Scandinavian countries, with common Scandinavian roots in language, can—at least with some training—understand each other's standard languages as they appear in print and are heard on radio and television.
The reason Danish, Swedish and the two official written versions of Norwegian are traditionally viewed as different languages, rather than dialects of one common language, is that each is a well-established standard language in its respective country.
Danish, Swedish and Norwegian have since medieval times been influenced to varying degrees by Middle Low German and standard German. That influence came from not just proximity but also that Denmark and later Denmark-Norway ruling over the German speaking region of Holstein, and in Sweden with its close trade with the Hanseatic League.
Norwegians are accustomed to variation and may perceive Danish and Swedish only as slightly more distant dialects. This is because they have two official written standards, in addition to the habit of strongly holding on to local dialects. The people of Stockholm, Sweden and Copenhagen, Denmark have the greatest difficulty in understanding other Scandinavian languages. In the Faroe Islands and Iceland, learning Danish is mandatory. This causes Faroese people as well as Icelandic people to become bilingual in two very distinct North Germanic languages, making it relatively easy for them to understand the other two Mainland Scandinavian languages.
Although Iceland was under the political control of Denmark until a much later date, very little influence and borrowing from Danish has occurred in the Icelandic language. Icelandic remained the preferred language among the ruling classes in Iceland. Danish was not used for official communications, most of the royal officials were of Icelandic descent and the language of the church and law courts remained Icelandic.
Finnish
The Scandinavian languages are unrelated to Finnish, Estonian and Sami languages, which as Uralic languages are distantly related to Hungarian. Owing to the close proximity, there is still a great deal of borrowing from the Swedish and Norwegian languages in the Finnish and Sami languages. The long history of linguistic influence of Swedish on Finnish is also due to the fact that Finnish, the language of the majority in Finland, was treated as a minority language while Finland was part of Sweden. Finnish-speakers had to learn Swedish in order to advance to higher positions. Swedish spoken in today's Finland includes a lot of words that are borrowed from Finnish, whereas the written language remains closer to that of Sweden.Finland is officially bilingual, with Finnish and Swedish having mostly the same status at national level. Finland's majority population are Finns, whose mother tongue is either Finnish, Swedish or both. The Swedish-speakers live mainly on the coastline starting from approximately the city of Porvoo up to the city of Kokkola. The Åland Islands, an autonomous province of Finland situated in the Baltic Sea between Finland and Sweden, are entirely Swedish-speaking. Children are taught the other official language at school: for Swedish-speakers this is Finnish, while for Finnish-speakers it is Swedish.
Finnish speakers constitute a language minority in Sweden and Norway. Meänkieli and Kven are Finnish dialects spoken in Swedish Lapland and Norwegian Lapland.
Sami languages
The Sami languages are indigenous minority languages in Scandinavia. They belong to their own branch of the Uralic language family and are unrelated to the North Germanic languages other than by limited grammatical characteristics resulting from prolonged contact. Sami is divided into several languages or dialects. Consonant gradation is a feature in both Finnish and northern Sami dialects, but it is not present in south Sami, which is considered to have a different language history. According to the Sami Information Centre of the Sami Parliament in Sweden, southern Sami may have originated in an earlier migration from the south into the Scandinavian peninsula.History
Ancient descriptions
A key ancient description of Scandinavia was provided by Pliny the Elder, though his mentions of Scatinavia and surrounding areas are not always easy to decipher. Writing in the capacity of a Roman admiral, he introduces the northern region by declaring to his Roman readers that there are 23 islands "Romanis armis cognitae" in this area. According to Pliny, the "clarissima" of the region's islands is Scatinavia, of unknown size. There live the Hilleviones. The belief that Scandinavia was an island became widespread among classical authors during the first century and dominated descriptions of Scandinavia in classical texts during the centuries that followed.Pliny begins his description of the route to Scatinavia by referring to the mountain of Saevo, the Codanus Bay and the Cimbrian promontory. The geographical features have been identified in various ways. By some scholars, Saevo is thought to be the mountainous Norwegian coast at the entrance to Skagerrak and the Cimbrian peninsula is thought to be Skagen, the north tip of Jutland, Denmark. As described, Saevo and Scatinavia can also be the same place.
Pliny mentions Scandinavia one more time: in Book VIII he says that the animal called achlis was born on the island of Scandinavia. The animal grazes, has a big upper lip and some mythical attributes.
The name Scandia, later used as a synonym for Scandinavia, also appears in Pliny's Naturalis Historia, but is used for a group of Northern European islands which he locates north of Britannia. Scandia thus does not appear to be denoting the island Scadinavia in Pliny's text. The idea that Scadinavia may have been one of the Scandiae islands was instead introduced by Ptolemy, a mathematician, geographer and astrologer of Roman Egypt. He used the name Skandia for the biggest, most easterly of the three Scandiai islands, which according to him were all located east of Jutland.
Neither Pliny's nor Ptolemy's lists of Scandinavian tribes include the Suiones mentioned by Tacitus. Some early Swedish scholars of the Swedish Hyperborean school and of the ninettenth-century romantic nationalism period proceeded to synthesize the different versions by inserting references to the Suiones, arguing that they must have been referred to in the original texts and obscured over time by spelling mistakes or various alterations.
The Middle Ages
During a period of Christianization and state formation in the 10th–13th centuries, numerous Germanic petty kingdoms and chiefdoms were unified into three kingdoms:- Denmark, forged from the Lands of Denmark
- Sweden, forged from the Lands of Sweden on the Scandinavian Peninsula
- Norway
The borders between the three countries got the shape they have had since in the middle of the seventeenth century: In the 1645 Treaty of Brömsebro, Denmark–Norway ceded the Norwegian provinces of Jämtland, Härjedalen and Idre and Särna, as well as the Baltic Sea islands of Gotland and Ösel to Sweden. The Treaty of Roskilde, signed in 1658, forced Denmark–Norway to cede the Danish provinces Scania, Blekinge, Halland, Bornholm and the Norwegian provinces of Båhuslen and Trøndelag to Sweden. The 1660 Treaty of Copenhagen forced Sweden to return Bornholm and Trøndelag to Denmark–Norway, and to give up its recent claims to the island Funen.
In the east, Finland, was a fully incorporated part of Sweden since medieval times until the Napoleonic wars, when it was ceded to Russia. Despite many wars over the years since the formation of the three kingdoms, Scandinavia has been politically and culturally close.
Scandinavian unions
as a historiographical name refers to the former political union consisting of the kingdoms of Denmark and Norway, including the Norwegian dependencies of Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands. The corresponding adjective and demonym is Dano-Norwegian. During Danish rule, Norway kept its separate laws, coinage and army as well as some institutions such as a royal chancellor. Norway's old royal line had died out with the death of Olav IV in 1387, but Norway's remaining a hereditary kingdom became an important factor for the Oldenburg dynasty of Denmark–Norway in its struggles to win elections as kings of Denmark.The Treaty of Kiel formally dissolved the Dano-Norwegian union and ceded the territory of Norway proper to the King of Sweden, but Denmark retained Norway's overseas possessions. However, widespread Norwegian resistance to the prospect of a union with Sweden induced the governor of Norway, crown prince Christian Frederick, to call a constituent assembly at Eidsvoll in April 1814. The assembly drew up a liberal constitution and elected Christian Frederick to the throne of Norway. Following a Swedish invasion during the summer, the peace conditions of the Convention of Moss specified that king Christian Frederik had to resign, but Norway would keep its independence and its constitution within a personal union with Sweden. Christian Frederik formally abdicated on 10 August 1814 and returned to Denmark. The Norwegian parliament Storting elected king Charles XIII of Sweden as king of Norway on 4 November.
The Storting dissolved the union between Sweden and Norway in 1905, after which the Norwegians elected Prince Charles of Denmark as king of Norway: he reigned as Haakon VII.